No threat of a prison cell outweighs the guilt a Minnetrista man feels for crashing through thin ice and causing the death of his infant daughter, the man’s attorney said.

Jonathan Markle made his first court appearance Friday, Feb. 8, a day after being charged with criminal vehicular homicide in connection with the incident last month.

Prosecutors said Markle, 41, had a blood-alcohol content of 0.13 more than two hours after his SUV broke through the ice of Lake Minnetonka with his 8-month-old daughter, Tabitha, strapped in her car seat in the back. Someone with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more is considered under the influence of alcohol in Minnesota.

Moments after he persuaded a judge to reduce Markle’s bail from the $150,000 requested by the state, defense attorney Joseph Friedberg said his client felt “overwhelming guilt” over his daughter’s death.

“The system can’t punish him any more than he has been punished,” Friedberg said.

Hennepin County District Judge Toddrick Barnette set Markle’s bail at $10,000 but told him that he couldn’t drink alcohol or take nonprescribed medicine and that he would be subject to random testing.

Markle said next to nothing during the six-minute hearing, reciting his full name and address when a court clerk asked him to state them for the record.

Markle and his wife and their two daughters had been dining at a lodge on Lake Minnetonka on Jan. 18 when they left for home shortly before 5 p.m. Instead of taking the streets home — a five-mile drive — Markle took a shortcut across the frozen lake, Friedberg said.

He had done it before, Friedberg said.

As he followed a channel between Priest’s Bay and Halsted Bay less than a mile from home, the ice gave way and the 3,500-pound Nissan Rogue broke through and sank. Markle, his wife and their 2-year-old daughter got out, but Tabitha was strapped in a child-safety seat in the back.

Friedberg said Markle made three attempts to save his daughter, diving into the freezing water to try to unbuckle her and bring her to safety. He couldn’t get the seat unhooked, the lawyer said, and by the third dive, the effects of hypothermia had set in. “His hands just wouldn’t work,” Friedberg said.

Rescue divers brought Tabitha up. She was unconscious and died Jan. 21.

Markle, a paralegal, was charged with criminal vehicular homicide. The criminal complaint says he told officers at the hospital that he’d had two beers at the lodge, and when a blood sample was drawn a couple of hours later and tested, his blood-alcohol content was 0.13.

When he announced the charges, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said that two beers would have produced a blood-alcohol content considerably lower than 0.13 and that the man had to have drunk more.

At Markle’s first court appearance, Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Michael Burns asked for bail of $150,000 without conditions, or $50,000 with conditions.

Friedberg argued that bail should be much lower, saying his client had been employed for a long time and had strong ties to the community.

“There’s certainly no threat that he’s going anyplace, and he’s no threat to the public,” he told the judge.

Barnette asked Burns why there’d been a three-week delay between the incident and the filing of a charge; the prosecutor said they’d been awaiting results of the blood-alcohol tests.

The judge told Markle his bail would be $10,000 if he abided by various conditions or $50,000 if he didn’t.

His next hearing will be March 4.

Afterward, Friedberg said that he’ll wait to see the extent of the state’s evidence against Markle, but that possible legal issues piqued his interest. Among them: investigators lacked a warrant to take a blood sample from the man.

The criminal complaint says Markle “submitted” to the test. Minnesota doesn’t require a warrant to take blood, Friedberg said, but the Supreme Court is considering a Missouri case questioning whether investigators must get a warrant before they draw a suspect’s blood for such a test.

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